Sun Microsystems has announced the release of an open-source version of its Java Development Kit for Java Platform Standard Edition. Sun has contributed the software to the OpenJDK Community as free software under the GNU GPLv2. Sun also announced that OpenJDK-based implementations can use the JCK (Java SE 6 Technical Compatibility Kit) to establish compatibility with the Java SE 6 specification. OpenBSD has already started importing the release.

Using a compiler to compile your code IS NOT a derivative work. Even linking in GPL libraries (thus the LGPL) is not a derivative work. So these arguments are specious. You can create GPL works with C#, and you will be able to create closed-source products with java. You just cannot create a closed-source _VERSION_ of java (as the previous poster mentioned). The good news, is since C# is an open standard (ISO), you can produce an open-source version of the C# language, and thus we have Mono. Nevertheless, you can most certainly create a closed-source Mono project if you want, but obviously most would use C# to create closed-source projects.

As an example of an excellent open-source C# application, you just have to look at SharpDevelop. It is an excellent GPL C# application.